


these lines i wear around my wrist (are there to prove that i exist)

by majesdane



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-11
Updated: 2009-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:15:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdane/pseuds/majesdane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It wasn't anyone's fault but her own, and she knew it.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	these lines i wear around my wrist (are there to prove that i exist)

 

When she was seven, her father called her a bitch.

She didn't know what it meant back then -- not really, anyway, though she knew enough to know that it was a bad thing to be called. When she started to cry her father locked her under the stairs in the basement. She should have known better not to cry, especially when her father was going through one of his mean streaks and it seemed like his entire body just _stank_ of whiskey. She didn't know how long she was in there; her mother came down to let her out later, after her father had left. It was dark outside when she crept upstairs, shielding her eyes from the hallway light. She crawled into bed, tugged the sheets up around her;. She didn't sleep at all that night; at school, during her social studies lesson, she dozed off in class.

Her teacher yelled at her for it. The school nurse called home to ask if she'd been getting enough sleep.

When Amanda was fifteen, her father said she was a fucking ungrateful bitch. He spit the word out, _bitch_ and slapped her across the face. She didn't cry. In the bathroom, the door locked shut behind her, she split open her disposable razor to get the blade loose. She cut the word _bitch_ into her skin, on the upper part of her thigh, underlined it twice. It didn't hurt as much as she thought it would, but she didn't cut too deep. Just long, thin, shallow cuts. Even strokes. The next time she carved it in with the sharp end of a paper clip, after she'd worked it back and forth until it had broken into two uneven pieces. It took longer, cutting away at the layers of skin, but it felt more satisfying. It hurt more.

It hurt like hell when she got in the shower the next morning and the hot water splashed against it. It was worth it, though; it made her feel alive.

She's pretty sure that her father killed her dog when she was eleven. Her mother said that it was an accident, but Amanda knew that her father had hated her dog, a little mutt her mother had allowed her to adopt six months earlier as a birthday present. She called it Max, because she liked how it sounded and because she couldn't think of anything more creative. Her father ran over Max with his pickup truck in their driveway while she was standing on the front lawn, crouched down to tie her shoe.

She didn't talk to anyone for a week after that. No one from school called home. No one talked to her at all.

On her fourteenth birthday she lost her virginity to a guy she'd met in detention. Eighteen years old, a senior. He bought her cigarettes from the gas station two blocks down from the school. She remembered smoking them as they leaned against a wall outside the cinema where a bunch of kids from her school worked part-time, and then again five hours later, in the backseat of his car. It wasn't as if she'd really wanted to have sex with him or if she even really cared; she just figured she may as well get it over with, the whole losing her virginity thing. They'd fucked, she wasn't a virgin, that's all it was.

It wasn't until she was nineteen when she had sex with a girl for the first time, though the opportunity had presented itself to her numerous times before that. She thought that fucking a guy was cheap; she could do that any time and it didn't mean anything, regardless of how good it was. But fucking a girl, that was different. It had to be done right. The girl she hooked up with was someone she'd met at a party three weeks earlier. They'd hung out a bit, gotten drunk together a few times. Amanda can't remember her name -- she thinks it was Morgan or something. Something preppy sounding.

The first time Morgan (she decided she'd just call her that) kissed her, she'd been confused. It had been soft, gentle. Tentative. Very much unlike when guys had usually kissed her. Morgan had blushed and looked unhappy, thinking that Amanda didn't like it. So Amanda grabbed her and kissed her and when Morgan sighed into the kiss and her hand gripped the back of Amanda's head, Amanda decided that this was alright, that it felt pretty nice.

It wasn't anything more than a fuck, though. Morgan hadn't understood that. (Amanda wasn't the best in conveying her intentions.) Later, she made a cut for every time Morgan had called her a bitch, and then a few extra, just to make it hurt a little bit more. She didn't blame Morgan; it wasn't her fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but her own, and she knew it. At night she ran her hands over the cuts in her thighs; they felt swollen. She probably would have cried, if she thought it would have made her feel better.

Amanda was twenty-seven when she went to prison. She was thirty-two when she got out.

Prison had made her more aggressive, but the drugs sometimes mellowed her out, when she got a shot of the good stuff. Other times it just made her a little less angry. She got locked up in solitary confinement for a week when she was twenty-nine, for starting a fight with another inmate. Her lip got split in the process; she spent the week licking at the cut until it finally healed. Her right eye was still swollen when she was sent back to her regular cell. The next time she got her hands on some heroin, the cheap, dirty stuff, she briefly considered over-dosing. It wasn't so much that she wanted to die, it's just that she didn't feel anything anymore. It was the only way she could think of to escape all this.

Five years later, and she was back on the street, broken, poor, homeless, and so addicted to heroin that she could barely see straight. A guy she knew back in high school hooked her up with a dead-end job at the hospital near her house, working the counter in one of those stupid coffee shops in the lobby. It sucked and Amanda hated it, but at least she got paid. She saved the bare minimum, just enough to buy herself some clothes, food, and other necessities. She crashed at another friend's run-down apartment for two months until she'd saved up enough to get her own shitty apartment a few blocks down.

All her other money went towards her next high. That was all she had to look forward to, anyway. She may as well make the fucking most of it.

And then she overdosed and she ended up in the hospital. The doctors tried to tell her to get help, that there were tons of people she could go to and rehab centers where she could get clean. And Amanda hated every single one of them, every single doctor in their too-white coats, with their fake smiles and even faker kindness. She'd never needed anyone's help before, not with anything, ever; she certainly wasn't going to take some prick's advice now. She got the hell out of there as soon as possible, once her head stopped hurting so fucking much and the world didn't spin each time she tried to take a step.

When she was thirty-two years, six months, one week, and four days old, she was reborn.

Two months went by and she could still taste the blood and metal in her mouth, could still hear the dull _thunk_ of the scalpel being slammed into skin, could still see her blood covered hands, crimson and shaking. In her head was the steady, dull ticking of a timer. She'd bolt up in bed at night, shivering, soaked with sweat, re-living the moment over and over again in her head, convinced he'd come back for her, to test her once more.

But then he _did_ come back for her, but not to test her. He wanted to make her stronger, make her better. She was like clay and he was the sculptor, molding her into something more than what she was. She never questioned him, ever, not even when he told her to slit her wrists. It was necessary, he told her, though he didn't have to; she knew he'd never ask her to do anything that wasn't.

At the age of twenty four, she had her first real girlfriend. They'd started as fuck buddies and it had turned into something more, unexpectedly. They shared an apartment in downtown Los Angeles. Amanda was a slacker, though she probably could have gotten a real job, if she had tried hard enough (she had a degree in biology, after all, it wasn't as if she was a complete loser). It was just that she didn't feel like trying. She didn't see the point in it. Instead she worked at a bookstore a few blocks down. Her girlfriend, on the other hand -- Ivy, was her name; Amanda always seemed to date girls with preppy sounding names -- was a lawyer. Amanda didn't have a clue as to what Ivy saw in her.

Funny thing was, too, Amanda had been the one to end it.

She never could keep anything alive.

The thing she loved most about killing was the finality to it. Once you were dead, you were dead, and that was it. No surprise endings, no sudden twists. Your body was just a cold, stiff lump, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. It probably should have been harder to do it, the first time she had to kill someone. But the truth was, she'd been a murderer from day one, when she picked up that scalpel. Her first test. And she'd passed. The only one to ever do it.

It made her feel like a fucking superhero.

And John loved her, loved her better than any of the others. She was special. She was the one who lived, the one who proved that he was right. She was fucking brilliant, she told herself. And John saw it too, of course he did. He trusted her with his plans, trusted her to stay in the games and keep things fair. In the disgusting, blood-stained bathroom, slouched down in the tub, she adjusted the pig mask covering her face and thought of that. She also thought of Laura dying in her arms, seizing and spitting up blood, of Daniel, tearing Xavier's throat out with a rusted, broken saw; it had hurt to watch Laura die, but it'd been as satisfying as hell to watch Xavier bleed out onto the tiles. It gave her a rush and she'd given Daniel a twisted grin before plunging the needle into his neck.

She'd saved him. The only person she'd ever saved. She didn't like it, it didn't make her feel good. It was boring.

Killing was more fun.

When Kerry was tested, she stepped out from the light just as she was about to die, smirking, knowing that she had won. And when Kerry gasped and said _you_ , Amanda felt like the most powerful person alive. What she did and what John did were no different. He was a murderer and so was she; an apprentice following in the footsteps of a master. There was no need to lie to these people and make them think they had a chance. They were dead right from the beginning.

John may have despised murder, but Amanda relished it.

John got sicker and sicker and Amanda started picking up the slack for him. She wore his theatre coat with pride, even started calling herself _Jigsaw_ , instead of just Amanda Young. Who was that, anyway? Just some loser junkie who could never get a goddamn thing right. But Jigsaw was different. As Jigsaw, she became revered, she became feared. She finally _was_ somebody.

As the old saying went, Amanda thought, as she clutched her throat, blood seeping out through the wound, covering her fingers and hand, pride before the fall.


End file.
